September 11 seems to have changed the paradigm between art, architecture, culture/lifestyle, government, politics, and the media — hopefully for the better. An indication of this was seen mid-January in New York City when the Max Protetch Gallery opened “A New World Trade Center: Design Proposals.”

 

Gallery owner Max Protetch invited some of the world's leading architects, as well as up-and-coming and experimental practitioners and artists, to envision how the 16-acre site in lower Manhattan that formerly housed the World Trade Center might be redeveloped. He drew a fair amount of critical press for even attempting to organize such a presentation without authorization from or being under the auspices of any “offical” September 11^th organization.

 

Crowd-control for wrap-around-the-block lines at a gallery (not a block-buster museum show) in New York has never really been an issue to warrant national/international attention. (The last time this writer remembers such a scene was Anthony Quinn, in his artist persona, appearing at a gallery on East 57^th Street – in the late 1980’s-early 90’s; other than that, we always had Andy Warhol.)

 

The VIP line to get into the Max Protetch Gallery on opening night was replete with politicians, culture vultures, and an array of international architecture and design stars (many were in town for the next morning’s Interiors Awards). But even they had to give way to the television cameras from local, national, and international news broadcasts.

 

Fortunately, his efforts, despite criticism and crowd control, will not end with the Chelsea gallery show. On Saturday, April 6^th, “A New World Trade Center: Design Proposals” opens at the National Building Museum in Washington, DC, and will be on view until June 10^th. Fifty-eight highly imaginative and often provocative proposals are presented through a wide variety of media: drawings, photographs, models, computer-generated images — both still and interactive — and even a sound installation piece.

 

It is the second exhibition in the National Building Museums’s “Building in the Aftermath” series of programs and exhibitions exploring the impact of the recent terrorist attacks on architecture, engineering, and urbanism.

 

"The architects and artists proposed a wide variety of ideas, from replacing the original towers with mixed-used development to building only a memorial to a combination of both," says Max Protetch. "Not only does the exhibition document the architecture community's responses to September 11^th, but it also provides a snapshot of international architectural thinking at a specific point in time."

 

"The National Building Museum is privileged to host this significant and moving exhibition," says National Building Museum President Susan Henshaw Jones. "’A New World Trade Center’ has clearly struck a chord with the public and is helping to advance serious discussion of the future of Ground Zero."

 

On April 7^th, the Museum will present the Building in the Aftermath symposium "Re-imagining Ground Zero." Architects and artists participating in the exhibition titled A New World Trade Center: Design Proposals will discuss how the redevelopment of the WTC site — and of 21st-century cities in general — might be re-imagined and realized. Panelists will be architect Michael Rotondi, FAIA, principal of RoTo Architects; architect Winka Dubbeldam, principal of Archi-Tectonics; artist Mel Chin whose work addresses issues of habitat devastation, restoration and sustaining biodiversity; artist Vito Acconci whose art explores architectural forms; and art dealer Max Protetch. Robert Ivy, FAIA, Editor-in-Chief of Architectural Record, will moderate.

 

At the Max Protetch Gallery, “A New World Trade Center: Design Proposals” was co-curated by Max Protetch, Aaron Betsky, and the staffs of Architectural Record and Architecture magazines. At the National Building Museum, Curator Thomas Mellins and Chief Curator Howard Decker are coordinating the exhibition’s presentation. Its presentation at the National Building Museum is made possible by the Museum’s F. Stuart Fitzpatrick Memorial Exhibition Fund.

 

The National Building Museum, created by an act of Congress in 1980, is a private, non-profit institution that examines American achievements in building through exhibitions, education programs, and publications. The Museum is developing a permanent exhibition, Building America, to explore the achievements and qualities that are quintessentially American in our built environment.